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I'm always skeptical when teams think they have too much starting pitching (one of the reasons they list for trading Fister was because they wanted to move Smyly to the rotation).

The payroll reason makes more sense, although they might have gotten a better return holding onto Fister for a few months until some other team got desperate. Of course, holding onto Fister carries risk too.

Just horrible! How many top flight, successful teams go into a season with 6 or 7 options for their rotation. Smyly would have had his chance, you just don't make this trade unless you get your man and if the top flight prospects weren't made available, you don't make the trade. FTFA: Righty James Shields, who ranks two places below Fister, brought back two top-100 prospects, outfielder Wil Myers and right-hander Jake Odorizzi, the previous year. Get what you want or stay pat!

I guess they do have a sixth option in Alvarez but the old saying is you can never have enough pitching.

The payroll reason makes more sense, although they might have gotten a better return holding onto Fister for a few months until some other team got desperate. Of course, holding onto Fister carries risk too.

@2, yup, many made the same point when the deal went town. Then don't trade him, ya know? Some reasoned Detroit needed to clear some payroll for more moves, which OK, but those moves or move never came. Just a bad trade.

“You can see that young pitching right now is very difficult to acquire,” Dombrowski said. “We had a list of about 15 pitchers that we would consider in various deals. He was one of the 15. The other 14 people said no. And (the Nationals) said no at first.”

My theory: Dombrowski was paying it forward. The Mariners generously donated Fister to the Tigers a few years ago as a kind gesture of friendship. The Tigers are merely doing the same with Fister now. Maybe your team will be next to receive Doug Fister!

That's the biggest thing for me, it speaks to a massive undervaluing of Fister's worth. If the list is 15 names long the majority of those guys had better be centerpieces in actual packages, not the 1 prospect and filler the Tigers got.

I guess the Tigers figure that Fister was due for a fall, and besides, they have plenty of starting pitchers, don't they? (Of course, they thought this in 2006, too, and all of them except Verlander immediately got hurt and/or began to suck...)

Left unexplained in that absurd feelings dump masquerading as an essay was the question of why the CIA was funding draft dodging? Iowa expanded the workshop massively during the Vietnam War to help writers stay out of the draft, which seems like a weird thing for the CIA overlords to sign off on. It produced some of the famed great classes of grads and also, by legend, the start of the model of graduating and then just hanging around Iowa City forever drinking cheap beer and talking about the novels you had in your drawer (instead of moving to NYC and drinking expensive beer and talking about the novels in your parents' basement.)

As a takedown of the Frank Conroy workshop years, that piece has nothing on those devastating sentences by DFW on Conroy's absurd "cerulean skies" writing for some cruise ship line.

A lot of gnashing of teeth. The trade and free agent markets are not liquid. It is rare to have 4-5 choices to achieve your goal. Sometimes, the trade is 50-50 and sometimes not. They clearly wanted to make this trade (likely related to salary constraints than anything else), and wanted a prospect in return and not only was this the best deal, but likely the only deal on offer and one that could have evaporated if the Nationals sign a pitcher.

Let's see how it plays out. Looks like Nationals got a better deal but not by so much as to be a wipeout.

I thought the article was good in that it laid out the logic, explained that they talked to 15 teams at least, and laid to rest the argument that he DD didn't know what he was doing.

I still can't shake the nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe Dave D. knew of a ticking timebomb in Fister. Maybe a subtlety in a doctor's report or X-ray had a little something that bothered him. Nothing that might raise the eyebrows of the Nats medical staff but just something. Or maybe Fister has photos of Dave in a compromising position and wanted out of Detroit.